Geography and ethics: a moral turn?

I A new disciplinary interface The invitation to write progress reports on geography and ethics recognizes the signifi-cance of a new disciplinary interface. Indications of a `moral turn are evident in various conference programmes and publications. It was first clearly signalled in the proceedings of a conference organized by the Social and Cultural Geography Study Group of the Institute of British Geographers, the introduction to which called for an engagement with ethics or moral philosophy, involving `the articulation of the moral and the spatial (Philo, 1991: 26). Then there was a session entitled `Rethinking metatheory: ethics, difference and universals at the 1994 meeting of the Association of American Geographers, which generated a special issue of Society and Space (15(1), 1997) introduced by an essay on a normative turn in social theory (Sayer and Storper, 1997), along with articles linking social justice with broader considerations of the good life (Smith, 1997), rethinking geopolitical encounters (Slater, 1997), and exploring aspects of identity relevant to a relational ethics (Whatmore, 1997). There was a session on `A/moral geographies at the 1995 IBG conference, and links between geography and ethics featured at the 1997 meetings of both the RGS (with IBG) and the AAG, with the promise of more to come in 1998. Social justice has returned to the geographical agenda, heralded by Harvey (1992a; 1993). The diversity of re-engagement with this topic is indicated in a special issue of Urban Geography (15(7)), and in articles on substantive issues such as change in South